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Social enterprises combine passion and profits by building positive impact directly into the business model – and they are on the rise. More and more, consumers are voting with their dollars to support companies that have a mission. Recent research shows that 56% of U.S. customers won’t buy a brand they perceive as unethical, and 86% of Millennials believe company success should be measured by more than just bottom-line financial performance.

From Kenya and Mexico to the U.S., these five founders of social businesses share their stories and secrets for success.

Alternative Waste Technologies is a mission-driven social enterprise in Kenya that guarantees safety while cooking and reduces the climate change impact of traditional fuels by manufacturing charcoal briquettes as an alternative to traditional charcoal and firewood – both of which contribute to air pollution. The company also creates employment opportunities for out-of-school youths as a pathway to business ownership by offering jobs and graduating them to become franchise owners.

Kenya is experiencing rapid urbanization at an annual growth rate of over 4% across all major cities, with 70% of the population settling in slum settlements. Because cooking is a major activity in any household, charcoal burns in every one. It’s predicted that 900 million people in sub-Saharan Africa will cook with traditional biomass by 2020.

AWT aims to mitigate climate change and deforestation, which are rampant in Kenya, by collecting agricultural wastes from farms (which is often burnt to pave way for a new planting season) and charcoal dusts from settlements and recycles them to produce fuel blocks known as briquettes. Briquettes work much better than traditional charcoal and firewood because they are smokeless, don’t spark when lighting, have a high calorific value, burn longer and offer value for money.

Sigana, who grew up in a middle-class household in Nairobi, says she used to “watch Kibera Slums from a distance. It is said to be the biggest slum in Africa, with a population of 500,000 inhabitants on a 2.3 square kilometer piece of land.” Her curiosity about life there lead her to work in the heart of Kibera Slums, which piqued her interest in waste management initiatives. Through research and study, she discovered charcoal briquettes. “My passion for creativity, business and solving a social problem fused together, and it’s been a wonderful journey ever since,” she says.

To other aspiring social entrepreneurs, Sigana offers this advice:

Don’t view social problems as “cut and paste” projects. Take time to understand the particular needs of the communities you wish to develop an intervention for. Just because a project worked in one area does not mean that it will automatically work in another area. Talk to community members and get their buy-in.

Think like a non-profit but act like a corporation. Ideally, your product or service is providing a triple-bottom effect solution: it’s solving a social problem, an environmental problem and an economic problem. It therefore requires patience. You will not make profits immediately. You will work thrice as hard as normal business owners but keep going and don’t lose focus. Profits will only start trickling in once your product or service has been accepted and adopted by the community. You will make it.

Alejandro Souza is the founder & CEO of Pixza. (Courtesy of Pixza)Pixza

Alejandro Souza, Founder & CEO of Pixza

Pixza sells the world’s first blue corn pizza made out of 100% Mexican ingredients. The social aspect of the business is that Pixza also combats homelessness in Mexico. For every five slices sold, a sixth slice is automatically delivered to homeless young adults who then have the opportunity to join the company’s “The Route of Change” program in which they get a shower,haircut, medical check-up and clean t-shirt. Those who graduate the program receive a job offer from their local pizzeria, as well as an opportunity to live in their own apartment and work with a personal coach in order to establish and implement a life plan.

"Pixza is a social empowerment platform disguised as a pizzeria,” says the 31-year-old Mexican founder and CEO of Pixza, Alejandro Souza. The social problem is a lack of social, economic, and reinsertion opportunities for kids ages 17 to 25 who are homeless, whose families abandoned them, who have no formal education, and who have a history of drug abuse and/or a criminal record. “It’s very difficult for these kids to find formal employment opportunities and be given a second chance. At Pixza, we offer them a job and a personalized coach who helps them develop a professional and personal life plan, as well as financial incentives and support, and formal education so they can continue to learn.”

Souza offers these three pieces of advice to aspiring social entrepreneurs:

Recognize that you can change the world. Everything you do, think, or say has an impact, and the same goes for everything you don’t do, think, or say. Have enough ego to know that you can change the world, but enough humility to know that you can't do it by yourself. Then, have enough courage to act.

Take time to discover your inner genius. You need to know who you are and what you want to do uniquely in this world. Every entrepreneurial endeavor and dream has to come from that unique space of what makes you passionate. What is your dream? What is your unique mark on this world?

Discover your “Big Why.” The saying goes, “He who has a big why in life can endure any how." The big why is your passion. Without meaning or passion, no one is going to believe in your ideas. When you have the big why, you will endure any obstacle to reach the final destination.

Kennedy Lamwenya is the founder& CEO of SunPoynt Energy. (Courtesy of SunPoynt)SunPoynt

Kennedy Lamwenya, Founder& CEO of SunPoynt Energy

SunPoynt Energy is a social franchise that provides rural markets in Kenya, where over 75% of people are not served by grid electricity, with solar-powered TV systems that offer six hours of television, lights and cell phone charging at night. Only 39% of Kenyans have access to news, and an even smaller percentage of children have light at night to study, so SunPoynt created a reliable power supply to bring knowledge and education to off-grid areas.

Since launching in mid-2015, SunPoynt has provided TV systems to over 77,000 people in rural Kenya and has increased sales by over 50% every year. The company has also saved 500 tons of carbon emissions by replacing kerosene lanterns with solar power. 70% of children in SunPoynt homes have reported improvement in school grades.

“Thanks to the sun’s rays and mobile technology, SunPoynt customers can light up their homes, charge their phones, and tune into radio and TV from the comfort of their homes, without having to worry about power bills or making dangerous trips across long distances to use questionable charging stations,” says SunPoynt founder and CEO Kennedy Lamwenya, age 30. “They can do all this at the flick of a switch for less than they used to spend on kerosene.”

Growing up in rural Kenya, Lamwenya experienced first-hand the challenge of having to depend on kerosene for home lighting, including itchy eyes and running out of fuel before he could complete his studies. He also saw how his parents stretched their small incomes to ensure they bought enough kerosene for the family. When he graduated from university, he vowed to become the change he wanted to see, ensuring rural school children would have access to clean solar power.

“I would hope other social entrepreneurs could learn from the mistakes I made,” says Lamwenya. He offers this advice:

Do your planning. Regardless how great your idea or service is, if you haven’t thoroughly determined who your ideal customer is, how much money you will spend month to month, and what your short and long-term goals are, you’ll struggle more and more as your company grows.

Utilize technology. Even though investing in technology can seem like an expenditure you can do without, in the long run, you'll hurt your company if you don't. Whether an accounting app or a subscription to websites that help you attain the right legal documents and sign them online, the right tech can save you time and money.

Market to the right customer. One of the biggest mistakes new companies make is identifying the wrong customer base, advertising in the wrong place or designing a site that turns off users. It’s easy to assume that a good product is all you need but the opposite is true. You need great marketing to fuel your product or service.

Don’t over- or under-spend. While it’s worthwhile to spend money where it counts, it can be easy to get carried away and spend too much. On the other side of the coin, you may not be spending enough. Sometimes, for example, it is necessary to conduct market research, which will quickly generate more revenue for you, or hire someone for your team who can handle important aspects such as fundraising.

Generate an online presence. Just as it’s important to market your company to the right audience, you’ll also benefit greatly from having a strong online presence. If your website is too text-heavy and hard to navigate, or if you aren’t spreading your content across the right social media platforms, no one is going to know about your product.

Build a great team. One of the worst habits you can have is relying only on yourself when it comes to running your company. It’s easy to want to control all aspects, from financing, fundraising and content creation, to marketing and social media. You have to replicate yourself in others and relinquish some control.

Ross Jundt is the founder of Conserva Irrigation. (Courtesy of Conserva)Conserva

Russ Jundt, Founder of Conserva Irrigation

Most homeowners don’t realize that irrigation accounts for 59% of a home’s water usage and more than half of the water consumed by an irrigation system is wasted. In fact, 1.5 billion gallons are wasted daily through inefficient irrigation systems in the U.S. alone. With less than 1% of the Earth’s surface covered in usable fresh water, Americans are unknowingly wasting a tremendous amount of the world’s most limited resource while racking up their water bills.

Conserva Irrigation is the very first national irrigation company in the U.S. committed to water conservation. Through the use of its proprietary assessment process and The Toro Company’s water-efficient technology, Conserva aims to revolutionize the way we water the world’s landscape. With Conserva, the average homeowner saves 33,000 gallons of water per month and 40-60% on their monthly water bills. Recently, Conserva expanded to commercial locations. The company will be optimizing outdoor irrigation systems at hundreds of Target stores, helping conserve 32 million gallons of water.

Founder Russ Jundt was born and raised in the Midwest. “We Minnesotans don’t just like our water – we love our water,” he says. “But I had no idea how passionate I was, or how passionate I would become, about water conservation until I started researching the issues. It was an epiphany – a life-changing moment when I first learned how wasteful irrigation systems can be, and more so that a solution could be created.” By founding and building the first national irrigation company, he figured he could force change more quickly than by seeking policy changes.

Emergency services in Africa are so unreliable that most people don’t even bother using them. The leading cause of death in an emergency is slow response time by the provider. One out of three people in Africa lose their lives because of the poor emergency infrastructure. This includes access to ambulances, security personnel, police officers, and roadside assistance. In Kenya, for example, the national 911 service is not properly maintained. The call may not go through and help often never comes.

At just 23 years old, Kenyan Edwin Inganji Yakhama set out to solve this problem by founding Usalama Tech Group. Usalama, more commonly known as “the Uber of emergency services,” is a panic button app that connects users to the closest emergency service providers (ambulances, security personnel, police officers, road-side assistance, etc.), and allows users to track vehicle progress. The system works as a subscription-based model, ensuring that providers arrive at the user’s exact location in under two minutes.

“When it came to targeting emergency service providers, we wanted to steer away from the government, as they are the cause of the problem,” Yakhama says. “Instead, we decided to work with the private sector and NGOs, including ambulance firms, security firms, organizations fighting gender violence and roadside rescue companies.”

Yakhama began developing Usalama with friends during their second year of college, after he suffered a terrible experience during his freshman year. Walking home from school in Nairobi, he was suddenly attacked and robbed by four men, one of whom was armed with a gun. The attack ended with the young man in extreme pain, wondering, “What if they had shot me and there was no one around to help?”

Crime rates in Nairobi and other African cities are at an all-time high as cost of living increases. Aside from mugging, rape, kidnapping, armed robbery, carjacking, domestic violence and burglary are all concerns. “We realized that by finding an efficient way to connect victims with emergency service providers, we could either reduce the damage or prevent the situation from happening at all,” Yakhama explains.

Yakhama encourages potential social entrepreneurs to make sure they understand the core need their society is facing in order to craft the right solution. “Also,” he says, “be persistent and willing to learn while rolling out your carefully crafted solution. Most people are scared of change, hence the need for persistence.”

Note: the NextGen in Franchising Global Competitionhelped four of the founders featured in this piece turn their concepts into franchises. Nominations opened up again on May 1, 2018 for this year's competition.

MeiMei Fox is a New York Times bestselling author specializing in health, wellness and positive psychology. As a writer and life coach, she helps people align careers with their life purpose.

I am a New York Times bestselling author, coauthor and ghostwriter of over a dozen non-fiction books and hundreds of articles for publications including Huffington Post, Self, Stanford magazine, and MindBodyGreen. I specialize in health and wellness, spirituality and psycho...